The Next Level?

As you may or may not have noticed, posts have been few and far between lately. This is both because I haven't been inspired/had time to write, and because I feel that little of what I've been doing has been noteworthy. We've been spending a lot of time organising, or doing little projects and bits and pieces here and there. Though these add up, most of them haven't really been worthy of a blog post. Still, there have been things I haven't written about that I could have, often because I don't have a picture (why do I think every blog post needs a picture?), or are too lazy to go take one. I was half wondering if maybe this blog was coming to a close, something I wasn't too happy about, because I have gained a lot from blogging. I find that writing down what we're doing here keeps me motivated, and helps me to realise what we are achieving, the bits that would otherwise pass unnoticed. It also helps me to think about the greater picture, and where we are going with all of it.

Then last night I had a bit of a revelation. Up until now, just about everything we've been doing, all our energy, had been focused on getting the house built. It's occupied all our thoughts, and most of our spare time, and now it's done.

So I guess to some extent we've had a well deserved rest (if you can call all the moving and organising we've done over the last month 'resting'), and an adjustment period, settling into the new house. And now, we're left wondering what we do now...

Sure, there are plenty of things still waiting on the list, like organising DD's playroom, planning for starting official homeschooling next year, working on the gardens, making curtains etc etc. The list is endless. And that will continue on, and hopefully always will.

But there is another side of this simple living that is starting to gain a bit of a focus in my mind lately. It's no secret to those that know him that DH isn't happy where he works. It's a high stress environment, with little recognition of the effort he puts in, and constant concerns about his job role changing to one he's not happy with. On top of that, with our move to the outskirts of the city, a couple of extra hours a day are lost in travel time. I'm starting to feel that this is the next issue we need to address.

The obvious solution is to find a new job, one where DH is happier, less stressed, and if at all possible, is working closer to home with less travel time. We're working on this now, with DH writing up his resume, and getting ready to apply for a few positions that are coming up.

But this is only a temporary solution. It will improve things, but it isn't what we eventually want as a family. I guess it's my sister's fault. She's shown us a different way of life to the 9-5 slog that most people are a slave to. She's managed to build up a successful portfolio of photos, and earn enough that her husband was able to quit work, and both of them are staying home to care for their new baby. Is there any better way to organise things?

Of course, this has taken her several years, and a LOT of hard work to achieve, and I don't know if I can ever get to that stage (she managed to do this before having children, which was a big benefit), but it does give us something to aim for. Perhaps one day, when we've paid off the mortgage (will that day every come? Seems so far off in these early days), if I can make even a little money from my photographs, and we get our gardens and orchard well enough established to provide a large amount of our food, DH will be able to work part time, and spend a lot more time here at home with DD and I, growing things, caring for the animals, and enjoying life. I think 2 days a week would be good, don't you?

So, along with all our usual things that we're doing and working on, this is probably the larger goal that we're aiming for. Yes, it's a dream at this stage, and perhaps something we will never achieve, but without dreams, where would we be?

First Spring Harvest

No time for long posts tonight, so I'll just leave this picture of today's harvest for your enjoyment. Not bad huh? There were also about 8-10 mulberries that didn't make it to the picture...

I have lots more garden photos that hopefully I'll have time to post tomorrow. Hope everyone is enjoying the first day of spring.

Spring is in the Air!

There has been a definite change in the weather in the last week or so. We're pulling jumpers off by 10am, and changing into shorts at 10pm! Nights are cooler, but nothing like what they were a mere few weeks ago. I swear that the sunshine even LOOKS different, and it just FEELS like spring.

A few days ago, the wood ducks that live on the neighbours dam bought their 3 tiny ducklings for a wander across our paddock, and the flowers are covered in bees.

In the spirit of this seasonal change, we've had a very relaxing weekend. After a somewhat rocky start, we spent Saturday at the beach on Bribie Island. The water was still cold, but that didn't stop DD getting as soaking wet as she could without actually immersing herself. We collected shells and rocks worn smooth by the waves, and even managed to get the kite in the air. We were all pleasantly relaxed and exhausted after that, so we came home, had a barbeque dinner, and had an early night.

This morning spring grabbed me at the markets, and I bought up big on fruit trees to add to the orchard. I bought a peachcot (cross between an apricot and a peach, never tasted one before), a yellow Dorset apple (different to the apple I have now), and a Eureka Lemon. I also bought another passionfruit vine to plant in the front garden. This brings my fruit tree total to 20 (I think, I'll have to count them again to be sure!) I've also ordered a pair of kiwi fruit vines, which should arrive in the next few weeks. I'll have to figure out where I'm going to put them though!

We also bought another 30m of hose, and ran it up the back, as watering the garden and fruit trees has become a nightmare. I'm afraid to say that for the most part my garden takes it's chances with water. I water when planting, and sporadically here and there, but mostly my plants have to make do with the rainfall. Unfortunately it's hasn't really 'rained' above a 2 minute sprinkle for a month or more now, so the poor garden is feeling it. Everything is miraculously still growing, but I'm sure it'd be doing better for a little water.

So this afternoon, with DH's help, I watered every tree in the orchard! DH sat on a stool and filled buckets for me (the hose only just reaches the orchard, it won't reach most of the actual trees, and with water restrictions it's supposed to be bucket watering only anyway) while I delivered them to all the trees. It was quite a job, but hopefully we'll see some results in the trees. In reality, we should do it again in a week if it doesn't rain.

I've had a half dozen mulberries off the mulberry tree though, and the peaches are growing and look so cute! We also have a half a dozen baby nectarines, and the citrus trees have all been flowering for the last few weeks. The passionfruit has buds on it (only the black one, not the yellow one yet), and the loofah vine, far from dying, is putting out new shoots and flowers.

Growing things is so exciting! I go up often just to see what our trees are doing, and each new fruit or flower, no matter how small, gives me a real thrill. I can't wait until the orchard is really productive, and we're picking enough fruit to really make a contribution to our meals.

Flying Along

DD came up to me today with this picture she had drawn, and told me they were balloons. She solemnly explained that 'those ones are a long long way away, and these are closer', and that the balloons were really all the same size. I was totally blown away by her grasp of perspective, as although we've probably mentioned it to her before, I didn't really expect her to take in what I think is quite a complex concept.

Sometimes I think we defeat ourselves with our own expectations. We expect a child to be able to do certain things at a certain age, and that is all we see. If we don't listen carefully, we will miss these little moments that show us that a child's mind is amazing, and not something you should ever underestimate.

I have no idea when children normally develop this concept, DD could be right on track with it for all I know, but none the less I am amazed at how her brain develops. It's a privilege to have the experience of watching it as it happens.

And it's so obvious right now, she's jumping ahead in leaps and bounds. Along with her drawing ability (which is sketchy and intermittent!), she's really into constructing things out of blocks, boxes, paper, anything she can get her hands on. We cleaned up these 'pop-onz' the other day in one of our decluttering races (will have to post about those some day, they're fun!), and she's had a wonderful time making all sorts of structures out of them, and putting them together in ways that wouldn't even occur to me. She immediately decided one of the blocks was a window box, and has added flowers to decorate it.

It has also been amazing the last week watching her interacting with her new baby cousin. She's already besotted with her, and when she had a cuddle today, the expression on her face was akin to the expression on my sisters when she first held her too, simple wonder and love. It was beautiful to watch. And she is so gentle and patient with her too, quite different to our usual bouncy, excitable child. I am really looking forward to watching their relationship develop over the next few years.

As for formal homeschooling, we're waiting for next year, when hopefully we'll all be settled into our new home properly, to start. I have lots of plans, but right now we're so busy still, with decluttering, organising, and of course, cuddling the new baby, to really be thinking about schooling. And of course, we're learning so much every day that who has time to stop and do worksheets. Well, aside from mazes, which DD enjoyed the other day, and a few dot-to-dots...

Welcome to a new Baby

Sorry for the recent lack of posting, but I've been otherwise occupied. On Sunday morning, my sister gave birth to a baby girl. My mother, DD and I stayed near the hospital in a motel, and attended the birth. DD slept the night away in an empty birthing room while I got to privilege of seeing my first real birth. Yes, I've given birth myself, but you don't quite get to see that, you're so caught up in doing it.

My sister was amazing. She was planning on using the gas, but it made her feel sick, so she went totally natural, and did a wonderful job 'singing' her baby out.

While I hope to find more time to get back to posting now, it might be a few more days before we have pictures, as I lent my camera to my sister when hers broke in the heat of the moment. I did get some beautiful pictures for her though, that I'm sure she'll treasure for years to come.

Homeschooling Resources - Puzzles

Since the early days of planning to homeschool, I've put a lot of effort into collecting resources that will enhance DD's experience and learning. We started with puzzles very early on, somewhere between 6 and 12 months (my memory is a little fuzzy at this point), and DD was soon whizzing around doing the simple wooden peg puzzles with ease. These have now been packed away for my niece who is due to arrive within the next month.

Finding more complex puzzles was a bit of a challenge though. They jumped from simple single piece puzzles to ones that were far too complex for a toddler. But persistence paid off, and here and there we found some real gems. My mum found this bear dressing puzzle, with lots of different costumes for the bear family.

These shape puzzles I found for a couple of dollars each at a bargain store. They are surprisingly complicated, and offer a lot of opportunities for developing an understanding of fractions.

These shaped multi piece puzzles we bought at Judius, an educational store that supplies many schools and educational resources (along with some great musical supplies, which I'll detail in another post when I find the box they're all packed in). She loves these dinosaurs. The bird and dolphin aren't quite as popular, but still get done on occasion.

However, my all time favourite are these ones that I bought at Dragonfly Toys last week. To start with, they are simply beautiful to look at. I could stare at them all day, couldn't you?

But more than that, these puzzles offer real opportunities for developing creativity. Unlike other puzzles, there is no right way to put these together. Yes, they come in an original configuration, but the possibilities of these puzzles are limited only by your imagination. They each come with pictures showing some possible combinations, and DD quickly tried out some of these, following the pictures surprisingly easily.

She then quickly moved on to coming up with her own patterns. There is so much to learn in what appears to be a simple rainbow puzzle. The colours of the spectrum, size differences, visual discrimination, manipulation skills, and probably half a dozen other things that I'm not even aware of.

Even I was inspired to try my hand at some different patterns. I think that's the sign of a really great toy, that it's simple enough to inspire children, and even the adults want to have a turn playing with it. We played with these puzzles for nearly an hour when they arrived in the post. The other two puzzles are a little more complicated, and while DD has enjoyed pulling them apart and putting the pieces back in random colours, she probably still has a little way to go before she's ready to start experimenting with colours and patterns. No doubt we'll have a lot of fun with them over the next year though.

With so many puzzles, it's a challenge to keep them organised. Our order to Judius included this puzzle rack, which works really well for the flat A4 sized puzzles, which we still have plenty of. In this stack are some letter and number puzzles, a map of Australia, and some other multi-piece puzzles.

That still left a lot of puzzles with lots of pieces, but no boards. Originally we stored these in plastic cliplock bags, but aside from my dislike of plastic, these would quickly get crumpled and dirty. I wanted some sort of reusable storage for these puzzles. My first thought was drawstring bags, but the fact that you couldn't see what was inside was a definite drawback to that idea. So I decided to make them out of netting. DD loves these, and loves putting the puzzle pieces into them (very helpful when it comes to the tidying up part of the day), and it's very easy to see what is inside of each one. Unfortunately, the netting doesn't appear to be very strong, and a few of the bags have ripped already. I plan to line them with a second piece of (hopefully) stronger material from our mosquito nets, which should remedy this. I'll probably make a few extra bags too, since I think there are a few more puzzles that could benefit from ending up in bags.

Washing Liquid

I had a whole list of things that I wanted to get done today, but seeing as many of them related to organising DD's playroom, a project I'm stumped on right now, they didn't get achieved. I did manage to make another batch of washing liquid though, and since I haven't mentioned it before, I thought I'd do a post on it.

For quite a while I've bought a laundry liquid labeled as 'green', although I've never really been satisfied with the list of chemicals in it. Just because something is derived from a natural product, or is biodegradable, doesn't automatically make it safe in my book. Then I read this article about 'greenwashing' (click on 'show transcript to get the full article), which is basically how companies use key phrases to make their products seem more green. It's a fascinating reading, and just confirmed what I was already thinking. Since we have a biological home treatment plant, with all the water being pumped by drip irrigation to my fruit trees, what we put into that system is of even more concern to me. Unfortunately it seems that as in many cases, the only way you can be sure of what your getting, is to do it yourself.

Rhonda over at Down to Earth has this recipe for home made laundry liquid on her webpage. Personally I'm not too happy using borax. It's one of those natural, but not really safe chemicals to me, and anyway, it's a no-no for septic systems. So I cut that out. Washing soda, which is basically a salt, I didn't really want to put in either, and after looking around the web, it's mainly used for softening hard water. Since we have tank water, it's about as soft as it gets, so I figured I didn't really need it anyway. That leaves... um... soap and water. Nice and basic. I bought the el cheapo home brand washing soap, and from memory, it was less than $2 for 4 bars. I'm not completely happy with it, since it still has fragrances etc added, but it was all I could find. Once this packet runs out, I'll use my own home made soap (which is another post for another day).

Anyway, it's really simple to make. Basically, you grate a cake of soap, put it into a saucepan with 1.5 litres of water, and cook it until the soap all dissolves. (Watch it carefully, it boils over really easily, although it's just as easy to clean off the stove. I was distracted making origami paper water bombs at the time.) Then add that to a bucket with about 8 litres of water in it, and mix it all up. That's all there is to it.

I store it in this plastic 10 litre lidded bucket that I bought for $2 at the markets. It used to hold yogurt. Then I put about 2 litres at a time into a leftover plastic bottle from my last lot of commercial laundry liquid, and use a capful at a time in the machine. It goes quite thick initially, then thins down and becomes globby after a while. Not sure if that was because I didn't dissolve the soap well enough, or because I didn't add all the washing sodas and stuff to it. It works fine though, and the clothes come out just as clean as they always did. (Which isn't that clean, given that I have a 4 year old in the house). It works out at about 10c for a 2L bottle, so you certainly can't argue with the price! And best of all, it's just soap, so no worries about it going down the drain.